We're shorting bank stocks now too.

More details on that below.

But first...

Breaking News: "Dow Futures fell 100 points and the VIX rose this Friday on news of new all-time highs for the stock market"

The breadth continues to deteriorate with every week that goes by.

You notice?

You can see it in our trades as well. While the puts on our $SPY and $QQQ haven't started to work yet, the bearish trades on individual stocks are all either working or flat.

It's interesting. What you see in happening in the portfolio, you can also see happening in the market itself.

We saw new all-time highs this week for the S&P500. But we had the fewest stocks in the S&P500 above their 200 day moving average since December. And the fewest above their 50 day moving average since November.

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From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Our Hall of Famers list is composed of the 150 largest US-based stocks.

These stocks range from the mega-cap growth behemoths like Apple and Microsoft – with market caps in excess of $2T – to some of the new-age large-cap disruptors such as Moderna, Square, and Snap.

It has all the big names and more.

It doesn’t include ADRs or any stock not domiciled in the US. But don’t worry; we developed a separate universe for that. Click here to check it out.

The Hall of Famers is simple.

We take our list of 150 names and then apply our technical filters so the strongest stocks with the most momentum rise to the top.

Let’s dive right in and check out what these big boys are up to.

Here’s this week’s list:

*Click table to enlarge view

We filter out any laggards that are down -5% or more relative to the S&P 500 over the trailing month.

Then, we sort the remaining names by their proximity to new 52-week highs.

This leaves us...

This is the video recording of the February 9, 2024, Hot Corner Insider Weekly Strategy Session.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The most significant transaction on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by Venrock Healthcare Capital Partners.

The firm reported a purchase of roughly $1.2 million in KalVista Pharmaceuticals Inc $KALV.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The largest insider buy on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by Magnolia Capital Fund.

The investment firm revealed a purchase of $2.5 million in America's Car-Mart Inc $CRMT.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

When investing in the stock market, we always want to approach it as "a market of stocks."

Regardless of the environment, there are always stocks showing leadership and trending higher.

We may have to look harder to identify them depending on current market conditions. But there are always stocks that are going up.

The same can be said for weak stocks. Regardless of the environment, there are always stocks that are going down, too. 

We already have multiple scans focusing on stocks making new highs, such as Hall of Famers, Minor Leaguers, and the 2 to 100 Club.

We filter these universes for stocks that exhibit the best momentum and relative strength characteristics. 

Clearly, we spend a lot of time identifying and writing about leading stocks every week, via multiple reports.

However, we're also highlighting lagging stocks on a recurring basis.

Welcome to the Short Report.

We publish this...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The most significant transaction on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by Farhad Nanji, director at RXO Inc $RXO.

Nanji revealed a purchase of 747,424 RXO shares, equivalent to $15 million.

Market breadth can be a funny thing.

People think it's easy. People think they can just pull up some indicator and it's always going to tell them whether market breadth is good or bad.

But that's not how it works. Some indicators are more valuable in certain environments than others.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The most significant transaction on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway.

Buffett and Berkshire reported another substantial purchase in Occidental Petroleum Corp $OXY, this time with a total value of $245  million.

Another day goes by in the market, and more selling came in.

Investors are making a habit of this whole selling thing.

You notice?

In yesterday's trading we saw the fewest amount of stocks in longer-term uptrends since mid-December. We also had the fewest stocks in short-term uptrends since mid-November.

You may not see the selling pressure as much at the index level, but for those of you who actually take the time to count what the stocks themselves are doing, you know.

Take a look at the new highs list, essentially non-existent throughout the month of January, even with the S&P500 and Dow hitting the highest levels ever.

You can also see the divergences in Consumer stocks, Small-caps and Emerging Markets currencies:

This is the video recording of our February 5th Monthly Charts Live Strategy Session

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended February 2, 2024. This report is published bi-weekly, in rotation with The Minor Leaguers.

What we do here is analyze the most popular stocks during the week and find opportunities to either join in and ride these momentum names higher, or fade the crowd and bet against them.

We use a variety of sources to generate the list of most popular names.

There are so many new data sources available that all we need to do is organize and curate them in a way that shows us exactly what we want: a list of stocks that are seeing an unusual increase in investor interest.

Click here for a behind-the-scenes look at our process.

Whether we’re measuring increasing interest based on large institutional purchases, unusual...